Language is a story of "survival of the fittest".
You can argue about which words should and shouldn't be used in which way, but the simple truth is that if people use them then they'll survive, and if people don't use them they'll disappear. To express your appetency for them just emphasises your caducity (sorry, I'm still working to get those ones back into circulation).
The same goes for pronunciation. You can tell people that they're saying Taupō wrong, but the good news is they’re already swimming against the tide.
More often than not, New Zealanders are making an effort to say the names of their towns and cities correctly, and the ones still holding on to their mangled pronunciations are dying out (figuratively and literally).
To celebrate (the pronunciation, not the deaths) we're running a simple challenge on The Project this Te Wiki o te Reo Māori - tell us where you come from, and say it right. It's a beautiful chance to hear people across the motu shout out to their hometowns, and to recognise that this is the way we do things in Aotearoa now. No lecture or laws needed.
Post a video of yourself saying the name of your hometown in te reo Māori and what you love about it, then challenge somebody you know - or don't know - to do the same. I challenged Sam Neill, check out his reponse below.
